Top Mistakes Remote Job Seekers Make on Their Resumes
Commitment to Our Readers
GOBankingRates' editorial team is committed to bringing you unbiased reviews and information. We use data-driven methodologies to evaluate financial products and services - our reviews and ratings are not influenced by advertisers. You can read more about our editorial guidelines and our products and services review methodology.
20 YearsHelping You Live Richer
Reviewed by Experts
Trusted by Millions of Readers
It turns out that a whole lot of people who got a taste of remote work during the pandemic have no intention of going back to the office without a fight. A recent study from FlexJobs found that a full 65% of employees now want to work from home full time while the other third prefer a hybrid schedule. Nearly three out of five were ready to quit immediately if working from home was no longer an option post-pandemic.
In short, if you’re looking for a job that lets you work from wherever, get in line — openings for remote positions are attracting a whole lot of resumes. If yours is one of them, keep reading to learn about the biggest mistakes you definitely want to avoid straight from the career coaches at FlexJobs.
Last updated: July 29, 2021
Failing To Format for Ruthless Robots
According to CNBC, virtually all the big companies use applicant tracking systems (ATS), which weed out 75% of resumes as rejects before a human ever even sees them. You can outfox the machines by formatting your resume so it doesn’t get tossed for the wrong reasons right out of the gate.
According to FlexJobs, ATS can’t pick up information in footers and headers. Your contact info should instead appear at the top of page one and include your:
- City
- State
- Zip code
- Email address
- Phone number
Since no one prints resumes today, there’s no need to include your contact info on page two, but if you must, add a header only to that page.
Sending Out the Same Boilerplate Resume to Every Job
No one likes doing extra work just to find work, but you simply must customize every single resume you submit, particularly in the “professional summary” and “key skills” sections. That’s because those same bots that lose information in headers and footers are looking for specific keywords on your resume. If they don’t find enough of them, it won’t take long for the ATS to do what it was designed to do — bye-bye, resume.
Job postings list preferred skills and requirements. It’s up to you to work those requirements and skills into your resume as keywords. They’re different for each job posting, so each and every resume has to be customized using the exact same terminology and phrases found in the corresponding job post.
Getting in Your Own Way With Excessive Formatting
The third step to prevent bots from banishing your resume is to keep things simple when it comes to formatting. That means avoiding all elements that ATS have trouble scanning. According to the career coaches at FlexJobs, that includes:
- Text boxes
- Tables
- Uncommon fonts
- Uncommon bullet points
- Margins smaller than 0.5 inches
- Charts
- Graphs
- Columns
- Images
- Graphics
Failing To Shine a Light on Remote Work Experience
Now that you’ve done your best to survive the ATS gauntlet, remember why you’re here. When on the hunt for a remote job, you’re going to want to highlight your past remote work experience right up front. You can keep your resume in the good pile simply by adding “remote” or “partial remote” next to your location or job title. According to FlexJobs, however, you can get more specific if you choose by adding the percentage of time you worked remotely if you were hybrid, or the start and end dates if you were remote temporarily during the pandemic.
Omitting Any Remote Experience, Professional or Otherwise
If you did it remotely, it should be on your resume, even if it seems like it has nothing to do with the kind of work you’re applying for. That includes classes you took remotely, training courses you took or taught and meetings or team collaborations you took part in through a laptop or phone screen.
Between that and any actual employer-based remote work you’ve done, you might have enough to fill out an entirely new section on your resume. If you can fill it out, a separate section designed only to showcase your remote work/life history and qualifications can be a great way to stand out from the crowd.
Presenting Achievements Earned as Tasks Completed
FlexJobs recommends taking the STAR method, which you’ve probably heard of as an interview strategy, and applying it to your resume. STAR stands for “situation, task, action, result” — and it’s a great way to frame your resume. Instead of listing things you did as assignments completed, present your accomplishments as exactly that — achievements worth mentioning on a resume.
The FlexJobs career coaching team suggests using bullets to describe your impact on each company you worked for by answering questions like:
- What improvements came as the result of my work?
- Who did my work help?
- What goals did I achieve?
- How did the company benefit from my time there?
More From GOBankingRates
Share this article:
Related Content
Artificial Intelligence Based Credit Scoring: How AI Could Set Your Credit Score
April 25, 2024
5 min Read
Low Income, High Spending: See Why Poor Millennials Splurge More Than Rich Boomers
April 25, 2024
5 min Read
I'm a Self-Made Millionaire: These Are 7 Major Mistakes I Made And Learned From
April 24, 2024
5 min Read
How to Boost Your Income from the Median Household Income to the Top 5% in Your State
April 25, 2024
5 min Read
Golf Clubs, Superyachts and All the Super-Expensive Toys of the Rich and Famous
April 25, 2024
5 min Read
How Biden's Politics Could Be Affecting Your Ability To Buy an Electric Vehicle
April 24, 2024
5 min Read
Sign Up For Our Free Newsletter!
Get advice on achieving your financial goals and stay up to date on the day's top financial stories.
Thank you for signing up!
Sending you timely financial stories that you can bank on.
Sign up for our daily newsletter for the latest financial news and trending topics.
For our full Privacy Policy, click here.